Animation is Film Review: The Colors Within kicks the fest off with a big heart and a great beat

Animation is Film, my favorite festival of the year, kicked off last night at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. It's always a great time, with lots of amazing movies from all over the world, filmmaker Q&As, and just a general sense of happiness and community. Animation sometimes gets paid dust by the industry and the filmgoing public at large. Sure, some of the highest-grossing movies every year are animated (like Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4 this year), as well as some of the best-reviewed (hi, The Wild Robot), but a lot of people still dismiss animation as kiddy fare, un-serious, whatever. Even here in LA, when I go to check out something a little more off the beaten path, a lot of the theaters are pretty empty. It can be a bummer.

So what a joy to kick off the festival last night with Naoko Yamada's gloriously good-vibe The Colors Within. While introducing the film, Yamada said that she sees the film as relaxing and happy, and invited us to all settle in and just enjoy it. That's very much what the feeling of watching the movie was. It's borderline conflict-free, mostly just a group of new friends hanging out and enjoying each other's company as they teeter on the precipice of a life that will probably be more difficult, maybe a little lonelier.

In the post-film Q&A, Yamada talked about what the core of the film is for her: it's about these young characters experiencing feelings that they don't yet have the words for, but soon will. I'm obsessed with this idea, it's so tender and thoughtful and big-but-still-small. It's certainly borne out in our protagonist, Totsuko (Sayu Suzukawa), a student at a Catholic school who sees other people as color. During the film's opening moments, we learn about the way the human eyes/brain see color, and then the way Totsuko sees color: hers is more ethereal, harder to pin down or explain. When we see her artwork hanging alongside her classmates', hers immediately sticks out. Not like a sore thumb, per se, but more like the Northern Lights. Everyone else paints figures as you'd expect, but hers is a trippy watercolor fantasia. It's beautiful, but confusing, and makes the world feel a little more distant for Totsuko.

But then she sees the color, the most beautiful color she's ever seen, while playing dodgeball with her classmate Kimi (Akari Takaishi). The game doesn't go in Totsuko's favor, but it's a win all the same, because the color is so gorgeous she can't shake it. So much so, that she ends up feeling driven to track down and spend more time with Kimi.

That magnetism is the prime example of Yamada's idea of feelings that can't yet be named. To my eyes, Totsuko has a massive crush on Kimi. It's a really easy movie to read as very, very gay, and maybe it is, but Totsuko probably doesn't know if that's the case. She just knows that this girl's "color" is the most alluring she's ever seen, and once she's had a glance, she never wants to be without it again.

Her quest for friendship ends up going a step further, as the two girls start a band with the elusive Rui (Taisei Kido), a boy who hides his love for music from his family since he knows they have a different expectation for his future. (Rui is also gay, according to me.) These three unlikely friends are an even unlikelier band, but man, do they churn out some bangers. Most of the movie is us just watching them hang out, learn their craft, tinker at writing songs. It's kind of a hang-out movie, but it doesn't feel as light as that term might suggest. Not that the proceedings are heavy or dark or anything, but I think it's that the movie really feels like it matters. These characters, in all their goofiness and youth, are important, and treated with respect even when they're being so ridiculous (Totsuko is such a lovable dork, like A+ would die for her etc.). It's even present in the way the characters of this world are designed, in a plethora of body types and face shapes. These feel like real girls (and one real gay boy) in a real school passing real time in real lives. It's hard to articulate; maybe it's something that just needs to be seen and felt for oneself, the rhythms and beats so gentle and true.

It feels really special to get to experience this story, to spend this slice of these characters' lives with them. School doesn't last forever. Nor does childhood innocence. The process of creation can be a shield against the scariness of the world, but only to a point. Ditto, the bonds of friendship. But in this story, these three characters find a shelter in each other, a bastion in which they can be silly and creative and not have to worry about how they look or sound. May all of us find such people in our lives.